How to wrap it better?

As a brand distributed (almost) exclusively online, we send out our fair share of parcels. And even though, in general, shopping online is greener than shopping in store, we wanted to understand and choose the packaging that pollutes as little as possible.

To study their environmental impact, we compared the various possible packaging options according to two main criteria:

1. Greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming
2. Waste generation that pollutes the land and the oceans

There are of course other criteria such as water consumption, rain acidification, fine particle emissions, toxic particle generation… These are important criteria, but we didn't include them in this first study.

1- Kraft packaging (the one we chose 💙)

Greenhouse gas emissions

To make cardboard, you have to (breaking news) cut down trees. Then, you have to transport them and turn them into wood pulp, which is itself pressed, dried and then compressed between steel rollers. This uses energy and therefore inevitably emits greenhouse gases (around 964 kg/tonne of CO2 equivalent).

But good news: you can choose trees from sustainable forests (which is what we did for our FSC-certified envelope). In other words, for every tree cut down, several grow back. And trees are still the best solution we've found for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. The result: according to the Swedish environmental research institute, sustainable forests sequester 730 kg/tonne of CO2 equivalent.

Finally, a kraft cardboard envelope doesn't vanish with a wave of a magic wand after being used once. So to calculate its carbon footprint, you also have to take into account its end of life, when the CO2 stored in the cardboard is released back into the atmosphere through incineration or degradation in landfill. Second piece of good news: in France, cardboard is recycled at a rate of 80%, which significantly limits emissions. In short, to calculate the total carbon footprint of cardboard from cradle to grave, you only have to add "just" 163 kg/tonne of CO2 equivalent.

In the end, when you add all this up, the carbon footprint of our kraft packaging is 15 grams of CO2 equivalent, four times less than a classic plastic packaging, for example.

Waste generation

In France, 13% of cardboard is buried in landfill. That's relatively low, but it's still too much. Because there's a risk in open-air landfills that lightweight items get blown away and end up in the oceans. Fortunately, unlike plastics, cardboard can biodegrade naturally within a few years.

2- Plastic packaging

Greenhouse gas emissions

Generally, the packaging you receive when you order a piece of clothing is a plastic pouch made of LDPE: low-density polyethylene. Flexible plastic, basically. As with cardboard, making it requires energy, which emits 1,870 kg/tonne of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases, much more than cardboard (even if the packaging is generally lighter).

But the real problem comes when you look at the end of life of plastic packaging. Because there are three options for your plastic pouch:

1. Incineration (32% of plastics in France): when it burns, all the CO2 captured over millions of years in the petroleum it was made from is released into the atmosphere. We're talking about 3,384 kg/tonne of CO2 equivalent. Let's still subtract 1,000 kg/tonne linked to the energy produced by incineration. In the end, your 15-gram plastic pouch will have emitted 65 grams of CO2, four times more than the kraft pouch.
2. Landfill burial (58% of plastics in France): as we wrote above, there's a risk that the plastic pouch gets blown out of an open-air landfill and ends up in the oceans. In the best case, degraded plastics end up in the subsoil… Unless they end up being incinerated… Back to case no. 1.
3. Recycling (10% of plastics in France): unlike the packaging you can put in the yellow recycling bin, LDPE plastic is hard to recycle, particularly because the process is very expensive. Only certain types of LDPE, separated from other waste when they're collected in factories for example, can be recycled. So it can never really be a solution. On the contrary, talking about recyclable plastic can keep us in a dangerous illusion and let us think we can carry on with these modes of consumption (here's a great article that goes deeper on this subject)

Waste generation

We mentioned it in the previous paragraph: 58% of plastics in France end up in landfills, then sometimes in the oceans, where they'll take millions of years to degrade. And in the meantime, there's a risk of water contamination and ingestion by underwater wildlife….or by you: 90% of table salts also contain microplastics.

Put yourself in the shoes of a turtle with a big craving for jellyfish...

3- Biodegradable plastic packaging

Over the past few years, so-called "oxo-biodegradable" plastic packaging has appeared, often simply called "biodegradable". The name is rather misleading...

Greenhouse gas emissions

So-called "biodegradable" plastics are in fact classic plastics, made from petroleum, to which a few chemical additives have been added so they break down more easily. So the greenhouse gas emissions are exactly the same as for classic plastic.

Waste generation

That's the whole problem: these plastics are only biodegradable under certain conditions, particularly at temperatures above 50°C. This requires a dedicated recycling supply chain that doesn't exist in France today. On the contrary, it even makes recycling harder, and the additives pose a danger to the environment.

4- Bio-based plastic packaging

There is also more and more so-called "bio-based" packaging, meaning packaging made from plant materials and therefore non-fossil: sugar cane for green polyethylene for example, corn for PLA, and so on. These bio-based plastics are still in their infancy (there are notably issues around pesticide use, water consumption, use of arable land, eutrophication, see the study here).

Greenhouse gas emissions

If you calculate a "cradle to grave" carbon footprint, bio-based plastic packaging is very appealing, close to a carbon-neutral balance. Indeed, as with cardboard, the raw material is plant-based and therefore sequesters CO2 when the plants grow back.

Waste generation

Bioplastics like green polyethylene have exactly the same chemical composition as their fossil equivalent. So technically, they can cause the same waste problems...

5- Reusable plastic packaging

Some companies offer e-commerce retailers reusable plastic bags. Basically, you send your packaging back by posting it in any letterbox, they collect it, clean it and return it to our warehouse. A kind of deposit scheme applied to e-commerce, rather appealing at first glance.

Greenhouse gas emissions

According to one of these companies, the average lifespan of a plastic pouch is 20 uses. The reusable bag would emit 1,110 grams of CO2 equivalent over this period, particularly because of the many round trips by truck to bring the pouch back to the reconditioning centre. To calculate the end-of-life emissions, we can estimate there are none (to keep things simple): indeed, damaged packaging is upcycled at the reconditioning centres, and the packaging that stays with customers (because they forget about it) can be reused for other purposes.

So with 1,110 grams of CO2 equivalent for 20 uses, it's better than a classic single-use LDPE bag (20*65 = 1,300 grams of CO2 equivalent), but much higher than our kraft pouch (20*15 = 300 grams of CO2 equivalent).

Waste generation

That's the magic of the deposit scheme: no waste generated over 20 uses…

6- No packaging at all

That's right, you can also go and buy clothes in a shop and refuse the disposable bag you're offered… only here's the thing: contrary to what you might think, shopping in store multiplies greenhouse gas emissions by 3 on average. It's mainly linked to the vehicle you use, so no problem if you go there by bike or by underground :)

Summary